Buxton at a Glance
 
Beyond the "haulover," the island makes a dramatic turn to the west. This is the point of Cape Hatteras, home of the famous lighthouse with the black-and-white, barber pole stripes and the first lifesaving station on the Outer Banks, established in 1849. Locally, this remarkable geographical feature is known simply as the Cape or Cape Point; and, since 1882, the village that grew up in the shelter of the cape has been called Buxton.

Right at the point where the cold Labrador Current from the north meets the warm water rushing up from the Gulf of Mexico at a speed of three or four knots, the waves can build quickly and the shoreline can change overnight. This makes Buxton the perfect place for the Eastern Surfing Championships, held each year the last week in September.

The Cape Hatteras lighthouse seemed to be at risk of being swallowed by the sea more or less steadily since the 1930d until, by a feat of engineering brilliance, the lighthouse was moved a mile inland in 1999. There were some successful efforts over the years to extend the shoreline in places that might protect the lighthouse, including a simple system that used twigs to gather wind-blown sand. Begun in 1940 and dubbed "Byrum´s dyke," this method was said to have added about 1,000 feet to the beach. The light, itself, was moved in 1938 for use elsewhere and was not returned to the lighthouse until 1950, and it has been in continuous use ever since.

The much-publicized threat to the lighthouse has obscured the fact that, over the long-term, the cape has been one of the areas along the Outer Banks that has been gaining on the ocean. Inside its curve, just west of the lighthouse, still stands a stretch of the maritime forest that once covered most of the island. Buxton Woods, as this enchanting forest is usually called, meanders about eight miles along the ridges of sand dunes that, scientists say, once formed the shoreline but now lie far back from the pounding ocean. Growing low along these ridges, in lovely profusion, are live oaks, red cedar, and holly trees, draped with vines and Spanish moss. Under their protection, thrive flowering trees like dogwoods and myrtle. Due to the proximity of the place to the warm Gulf Stream, brilliant green palmettos and other semitropical vegetation can be seen fanning out below the trees, supporting a diversity of birds and other animal life.

The interior of the cape at Buxton has always been one of the most densely populated sections of Hatteras Island and remains so today. It is one of the few places on the Outer Banks known to have been inhabited by Indians due to the artifacts unearthed there. Sir Walter Raleigh´s colonists knew the area as "Croatoan." Because they carved that word into a post, it is where the 1587 expedition´s colonial governor, John White, expected to find his family and the other colonists when he returned with provisions three years later and found the little settlement on Roanoke Island abandoned. But the unfortunate Governor White, grandfather of the first English child born in the New World, could not persuade his captains to take him to Hatteras Island amid the late summer storms. So he returned to England without ever knowing for sure where the colonists had gone.

Before the bulldozers arrived in the 1950s to flatten out the ridges and straighten out the curves for the construction of Route 12 through Buxton, the woods were crisscrossed with narrow, pine needle-covered trails leading from dwelling to dwelling. Today´s visitor can get a feel for the natural beauty of the area by abandoning his car soon after the road turns west or by walking along the National Park Service nature trail that preserves nine square miles of the wooded dunes. Though the highway is now lined with restaurants and shops that mask and compete with nature, many of these establishments, especially the restaurants and older marine supply enterprises have a charm and life of their own. Some are family owned and have been handed down for generations. Others have changed hands and, taken together, tell the story of how the island has changed. Whatever the case, the story of the survival of many of these small enterprises rivals the history of the survival of the Hatteras people themselves.

The name Cape Hatteras is associated with hurricanes even more than it deserves to be. This is because a weather station was established in the lighthouse keeper´s quarters at the Cape in 1874 and has been in continuous operation ever since, though most of the time until it was moved back to Buxton in 1957, it was housed farther south in the village of Hatteras. The station announces to the world how many miles from Cape Hatteras the latest storm or hurricane is, regardless of whether the tempest is headed anywhere near the Cape.

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